It’s going to get a little crowded during production… Anna Paquin and Shawn Ashmore, who played Rogue and Iceman in the original X-Men trilogy will return for Bryan Singer’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past, along with Ellen Page, who played Shadowcat in X-Men: The Last Stand.

Future Past is the sequel to 2011’s excellent X-Men: First Class and already has Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult, Jennifer Lawrence, Hugh Jackman, Sir Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart confirmed. The film is based in the popular arc from the Uncanny X-Men comics, in which the team are sent to a dystopian future where Sentinels rule the earth and mutants are imprisoned in concentration-like camps.

The announcement begs the question – who else will turn up in the sequel? There are rumours that Famke Janssen will appear again as Jean Grey, but we’ll see. What kind of roles will the confirmed cast have? How many of the big players are just cameos? Singer is keeping details pretty close to the chest but the appearances of a number of past characters is there to link the two sets of films together, making one huge X-Men shaped film universe.

Singer: “It’s epic. I don’t think people realize how big this movie’s going to be. We get to bring both casts together. We’ve cracked it in a way that it makes sense. I had a two-hour conversation with James Cameron about time travel, string theory, multiverses and all that. You have to create your rules and stick wtih them. That’s why Terminator and Back To The Future work so well. And there are certain mechanisms in X-Men, certain powers, perceptions and characters, that make this possible. …I’m taking into account every movie – I’m not just grabbing my first two movies and First Class and smashing them together. I’m taking into account the entire universe as it’s been laid out so far on the screen, and really respecting it and trying to work with that. People took things in various directions, so there’s some clean-up. But ultimately I’m not just ignoring them either.”

X-Men: Days of Future Past will be released July 18th next year (long wait). Filming begins in the next few weeks once Jennifer Lawrence is finished with The Hunger Games sequel.

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I am really glad that Bryan Singer is really trying to make this movie in a way that really makes sense. I can’t wait to see all of the former X-Men together, it really seems like this could be a way to tie the worlds together.

As a comic book fan of some 40+ years I appreciate the way Singer is approaching his projects and saying so; he respects what he has in his hands and the fans DO appreciate his careful molding of the characters on the screen

I know it’s a hard balance keeping the ‘fan boys’ and the ‘regular audience’ happy at the same time. Filmgoers may have NO reference about X-Men or Iron Man or Cap or Thor so they have to be happy first I suppose…

For those of us who have ‘lived’ with Cap and Iron Man etc; it is a BIT disconcerting the way they were molded for the screen but AFTER some 40 years of reading their exploits it is a VERY WELCOME activity; I am sure MANY (comic/fanboy) readers would say the same.

I NEVER thought in my life I would see what I have seen so far on the big screen!

As much as I want to see them all back and think it’s great that he’s doing this, I find myself struggling with what I want and the phrase “too many cooks spoil the broth”. I know once everyone’s back on screen certain fans will be complaining about their favourites not getting enough airtime or that a character/Singer could’ve done more. There is no way to make everyone happy but I for one, am excited that this is all happening the way Days of Future Past should.